History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. ~Winston Churchill

15 July, 2014

(Terrible) Cigarette Card Puns

Another jaunt into the cigarette card collections of the New York Public Library. We've seen animal-illustrated phrases and flapper butterflies; today we've got some wonderfully awful visual puns. They don't come with a date, but appear to be about 1890-1910 by the clothing, and British. These are selected from a set of 50. With language change a couple have lost their double meanings, such as"decorated flat"--flat, of course, still means apartment many places, but the term 'flat' to refer to a dull person has gone out (many thanks to the reader who noted that meaning!) Others are very British (googling "5 years with the colors" in its American spelling, gets you only the record of that card!), Most of them,  however,  will still get groans a century on. 


New York Public Library





New York Public Library





New York Public Library






New York Public Library





New York Public Library





New York Public Library





New York Public Library





New York Public Library





New York Public Library





New York Public Library





New York Public Library





New York Public Library





New York Public Library





New York Public Library





New York Public Library





New York Public Library



2 comments:

rock harris said...

So, I'm sure your statement was rhetorical, but on the "Decorated Flat" card: In the Victorian lingo, a flat was a boring person. Usually a guy. as he's dressed up much like a banker or stockbroker, he's probably not a lot of fun at parties. However, he has the large boutonnière, he is thus "decorated."

I believe the pun is that, as you know, a flat is also an apartment, and thus a decorated flat, I think, is an apartment that's furnished/hone decor'ed....

Anna said...

Thank you for sharing! I figured it must be slang for something, though I hadn't the faintest idea what. I shall rephrase...

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